


The Real Story

by Snow



Category: Firefly, Party Animals (TV)
Genre: Bar, Crossover, Gen, Journalist, Minor Character(s), POV Minor Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-27
Updated: 2010-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-07 14:16:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snow/pseuds/Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sophie Montgomery (a tabloid journalist from Party Animals) walks into a bar to meet Badger (from Firefly).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Real Story

**Author's Note:**

> I made Nick Berlin up. Also, for the purposes of this story, Sophie is a Core journalist.

Sophie Montgomery does not walk anywhere. Walk doesn't imply the purpose mixed with flirtation she manages to convey with every step. However she moves, though, she does enter the bar by foot under her own power.

She pauses to breathe in the smoke and smell of the fermented sugar which passes for beer.

Sophie sniffs. She vows never again to fall sick right before she has a column due. She would feel rather better at the moment, after all, if she hadn't had to trade subjects with Nick bloody Berlin from the crime section of the paper, just because he had a later deadline. He'd also, apparently, done no work on his story, whereas Sophie had handed him her column practically done. And he'd still managed to mess up the line between humour and treason and gotten himself hauled in for questioning by the Alliance.

What she knows about the man she's supposed to meet is that he goes by Badger, he thinks he's in the process of moving up in the world, and he speaks with an accent particular to Titan colony. None of which is going to help her pick him out of this crowd, even if she could distinguish individual voices, which she can't.

"You there," someone ahead and to the left of her says, and flags her to the open barstool next to him.

Sophie makes her way towards him. "Badger?" she asks, and he nods. Within thirty seconds she has found five identifying traits that would have helped her pick him out of this crowd. The quality of her colleagues is definitely the second-worst part about working at a tabloid, after the deadlines.

"Why aren't I meetin' with the man I set this up with?" Badger asks.

"Something came up, and I'm filling in for him," Sophie replies, ignoring the bartender when he tries to catch her eye. She thinks she prefers not to drink anything here.

"I don't like surprises," Badger says, taking a gulp of his own drink.

"Which is why you were informed of the change ahead of time. Now, when you contacted Nick you indicated you'd met Malcolm Reynolds. Is that correct?"

"I 'ave."

"How did he strike you?"

Badger snorts. "You doing a character piece?"

Sophie shrugs elegantly, a gesture which serves her better in the interview chambers in Parliament than it does here. "If I want to."

"No painting him as an hero, though," Badger says. "He's not that."

Sophie smiles dryly. She values her career and her life too much to do that, even if she were of the opinion Reynolds is a hero. "Care to answer the original question, now that you've finished bringing into doubt my journalistic standards and my common sense?"

"Arrogant," Badger says, draining his pint and ordering another. "He thought he was smarter than me and didn't care if I knew he thought it. Remarkable for a man who's survived as long as he has where he 'as."

"Do you think he's still fighting a Browncoat's war against the Alliance?"

"Oh, definitely," Badger replies.

"And you?" Sophie asks.

"I've no quarrel for the Alliance. It's possible I'm trying to fill in a couple of gaps of service the Alliance doesn't cover, but for the most part I'm a very content citizen."

Sophie manages to keep the disbelief off her face, but it takes quite a force of will. She doesn't think more than a handful of the words Badger uses are actually true. "I'm sure the Alliance is grateful to have such a loyal citizen," she says instead, to let him know she's onto him.

"I don't require gratitude," Badger says.

"Of course not." Sophie frowns. She's wasting time. "You're quite an important man on Persephone," she starts, but Badger looks suspicious rather than flattered. Sophie sighs and tries again. "Word on the street is that you can connect pretty much any two people who come through Persephone."

"I do have my connections," Badger says warily.

"Perhaps you'd like to talk about how you came to be where you are now," Sophie suggests. "You're a ways from Titan colony."

"You are writing a character piece," Badger says, "On me."

"I told you," Sophie says, "I'm writing whatever I feel like writing."

Badger stands then, and Sophie turns her head away so she can roll her eyes. About bloody time. "I can't answer questions with that kind of guideline," he says.

Sophie nods and makes the feeblest attempt at a protest she can. Fortunately it doesn't convince Badger to stay.

Badger walks off in a huff from the bar, and Sophie stays just enough behind him that he won't notice her following as he walks through the streets, back to his base of operations. Now she's going to get the actual story, not whatever excuse for one Nick Berlin had planned.

**Author's Note:**

> I welcome and appreciate all kinds of comments, though I would (obviously) prefer if any criticism was constructive. :)


End file.
